Tomorrow, I will drive my little German tank to a nearby dealership for state inspection. It's a yearly ritual that never fails to cost at LEAST a $100 - if you're lucky. You almost always need something.
State inspection in Pennsylvania has been on the books for as long as I can remember, and I was born here. It covers basic safety aspects of a vehicle: tires, brakes, working lights, and a general absense of rust holes or other safety problems. The final part of a state inspection is a road test by the inspecting mechanic. It's always been a pain in the ass for someone like myself who drives a car into the ground before surrendering it. However, I didn't fully appreciate state inspection until I lived in another state - Idaho.
To be fair, Idaho has a scant 1.3 million people, which amounts to 15.6 people per square mile. Not a lot of people, a lot of space, who cares about car inspection!
Idaho surmounted the problem of car inspection in a rather novel way. They instituted emissions testing in their most populous county - Ada County, which houses the state capitol of Boise.
Not surprisingly, emissions testing was hardly a problem if you had a decent car. The result - the non-decent cars stayed off the road or weren't registered in the county with the most other cars and the most people. Problem solved. Almost.
Nothing prevented non-road worthly vehicles from entering the most populous county, and as a result, you saw almost everything you can imagine: passenger sedans with no doors, cars with no hoods, pick-ups with rust holes the size of tires in the bed and no tailgates. My mother, who still lives in ID, dodged a runaway wheel on the way to work one day - not a tire, not a piece of a tire, an entire wheel.
Sure, it's still not a huge problem in Idaho, and I'm sure they aren't considering a state inspection statute. However, in a more populous state like Pennsylvania with 274 people per square mile, I'll pay my $100 for my own piece of mind - my brakes work and my tires are safe. I also hope I don't have to dodge car parts on the way to work. It hasn't been a problem so far - at least not in this state.
